


Ain't Nothin' Rolling but Dust

by MasterOfAllImagination



Series: The Long Road to Vegas [2]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slow Burn, and perhaps lost far too easily, featuring lots of bard & bardling interaction, in which trust is slowly and painfully earned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 20:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3823093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end of the world has come and gone, but Bard and his three children struggle on, surrounded by the desert and a slowly growing deficit of food. They are forced to leave their small Southern Utah town and take to the highway on foot, headed for the city of St. George and its promise of richer scavenging grounds.</p>
<p>When a blonde man in a broken-down pickup truck stops them on the road and shares rumors of survivors gathering two hours west in Las Vegas, Bard tells himself he's only looking out for the future of his children when he fixes the truck and hitches a ride.  But former politicians like Thranduil don't usually handle semi-automatic rifles with such familiarity, nor avoid talking about their past so easily-- and a lot can happen on the long the road to Las Vegas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't Nothin' Rolling but Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2015 Barduil Big Bang, incidentally my first-ever bang. Due to poor planning and even poorer preparation, this fic ends much sooner than I had originally intended, owing to the fact that I simply ran out of time. However, I do believe I have ended it in a satisfying place, and there is a sequel in the works that will continue the story outside the realm of the big bang. 
> 
> Special _special_ thanks go out to Ias, who not only switched dates with me so that I could have more time to work, but who also sat and wrote with me multiple times and gamely listened to me prattle on about this fic. You're the best, darling! I hope this lives up to your expectations.
> 
> More thanks go out to my artist, littleredrainboots on tumblr, who stepped in and saved the day by doing the art claim for this (her second BBB2k15 fic, btw!) when it looked like there wouldn't be enough artists to go around. And please take a look at it [here](http://littleredrainboots.tumblr.com/post/117485012188/aint-nothin-rolling-but-dust-by) because it was drawn on an incomplete draft but ended up looking entirely spot-on perfect anyway. Like. How even???

Red.

Red, everywhere.

Red sand in his hair and eyes and underneath his fingernails.

Red mesas rising up on either side of them, and red plateaus rising sheer in the distance.

“Come on, Bain,” Bard urged, holding out an arm to chivvy his faltering son into step.  He squinted up into the red sun, and then at his watch, wondering how long they had been walking.  According to the slow movements of the hands, it had been four hours.  Behind him, his children dragged plodding feet, hampered by exhaustion and a diet devoid of fresh food that had done no good for their stamina.

Nor his own.  “Alright.  Rest up a bit.  Right here.”  Bard pointed to a rock at the side of the road.  A copse of dead juniper trees clustered around it, providing meager shade.  

“Can I have the water, da?” Tilda asked, struggling to sit on the rock and soon giving up.  Bard put his hands under her arms and lifted her with a grunt so she could perch on top of it while Bain and Sigrid leaned against its sides.  

“Only a little bit.  We’ve got…” Bard looked at his watch again, already having forgotten what time it was.  “We’ve still got a long way to go,” he finally said.  He didn’t have the heart to tell them that they were barely ten miles out of Springdale, and St. George lay a further thirty miles ahead of them.  It would take them the rest of the day, and possibly into the night, to reach its promise of food and shelter.

He fidgeted with the strap of the watch, made sticky and uncomfortable by sweat.  It was  an old watch-- inherited from his grandfather, in fact-- but it was hand-wound, and that meant never having to worry about batteries. Batteries, like a lot of things Bard had once taken for granted, were scarce nowadays.

Bard pushed Bain’s sweaty hair off of his forehead.  It was bright red.

“Tilda, give your brother the water when you’re done,” he said.  

“No thanks, I’m good,” Bain said, waving away the bottle.  Tilda passed it on to Sigrid with a shrug, but Bard intercepted it.

“She drank an hour ago.  You didn’t.”

He got a glare for his trouble, but Bain eventually took a reluctant sip.

Bard eyed the dark grey ribbon of the highway they were following, feeling the urge to be moving on grinding in his bones.  But his children needed the rest too badly.  Sigrid pulled their hand-crank radio out of her backpack and hooked her phone into its USB port, squeezing a few hours’ charge out of its solar powered battery.  A small smile crossed her face as the screen lit up, displaying-- well.  Bard didn’t know what it was she constantly looked at on the thing, but then again , he didn’t need to know.  Whatever it was brought her solace, and that was good enough for him.

After ten minutes, Tilda began to squirm,  holding out her arms for Bard to help her down off the rock.

“Alright, troops,” Bard said, “we’re moving out.”

And they walked.

And walked

And walked

And walked.

As the sun drifted higher, burning a path of sweat down his neck,  Bard found himself wishing violently for his truck.  Or more specifically _gas_ for his truck.  When the sickness had come, most of the people in Springdale had packed up their kids and dogs and scrapbooks and clothes and driven out, taking the gas with them, headed for Zion National Park or Arizona or Mexico.  As if wherever they were headed would be any different than the place they were leaving.

Bard had stayed.  When the roads cleared, he’d broken windows and jumped fences, picking over the emergency supplies that the panicked snowbirds and scattered families had (oddly enough) left behind . He and his children watched news anchors tell strange reports of arable soil turning barren overnight and food flying off shelves in stores on the East Coast while they tucked into microwave  mac and cheese and canned tomatoes.

Maybe things were better in Mexico.  Hell if he knew.  The satellite had quit working after five days, refusing to show anything but _I Love Lucy_ reruns, and after two weeks even those stopped.  

All Bard knew was that it had been five months since the last _I Love Lucy_ episode,  the food was running out, and he had scavenged everything Springdale had left to scavenge.  Hence the need to move on.  St. George had one hundred times the population of Springdale, and therefore one hundred times the gas and food.  Or at least it had had one hundred times more of those quantities.   

It was a good thing no one was around to ask Bard where he intended to take his children once he actually got his hands on some gas.

Out of the blue, Bain spoke up, his voice cracking a bit .  “Hey, Sigrid, can I have one of those energy bars in your pack?”

“Earlier you were trying to save water for me by going thirsty, but now you want to eat my food?” Sigrid exclaimed, rounding on Bain with the suddenness of a lit fuse in the middle of the deserted highway.  Dashed yellow lines ran away into the distance under her dusty boots.  

Bain flushed hotly.  “I wasn’t trying to save water for _you_! You’re so self-centered--”

“Hey!” Bard interposed, a hand on each child’s shoulder, forcing distance between them where they had grown worryingly close.  Close enough to come to blows.  An insult was a tiny spark, but Bard had heard of wildfires spontaneously starting from just the mere heat of the desert, and he knew the similar effects it could have on things as fragile as human patience.

Tilda shrunk into herself behind them, her hands grasping nervously at her sides.

“First off,” Bard said, turning to his eldest, “those energy bars aren’t yours, Sigrid.  You’re just carrying them.  If Bain wants one, he can have one.”  Then he turned to Bain, feeling Sigrid bristle under his hand.  “Secondly,” he said, “I don’t want you calling your sister self-centered ever again.”  He straightened up, giving each child’s shoulder a squeeze and then releasing them, confident that their ire had been successfully transferred onto himself instead of each other.  “In fact,” he ended up adding, “don’t call your sister anything except her name.”

Neither Sigrid nor Bain did anything save squint in a vaguely resentful way up at Bard.  

“ _Is that clear_?”  he asked.  

“Yes, dad,” Sigrid mumbled.

“Yes, dad,” Bain mumbled.

Bard glanced at his watch.  It was nearing nine in the evening, and the sun was just beginning to go down. “Good.  Let’s keep walking, shall we?”

He herded them ahead of him, carefully placing Tilda in the middle after Sigrid handed over the requested energy bar with bad grace.  

It took the sun a little under half an hour to sink below the horizon.  Darkness came quickly in the desert, and  they left the road, taking shelter for the night against the steep red sides of a flat-topped mesa.  Then came the slow process of unpacking their camp: a five-person tent and cookstove that Bard carried on his back, the sleeping bags each child had rolled up and strapped to their packs, the cans of food Sigrid carried for their dinner.  

The tent stakes went into the loose dirt easily, and they kept the flap open while Bard knelt over the cookstove outside the entrance, warming one can of beans and another of soup.  Bain took his turn with the solar recharger, getting enough juice into his tablet to play Temple Run on its lowest brightness.  

Tilda watched over his shoulder for a while before playfully swatting at the screen, drawing an annoyed outcry from Bain and turning Bard’s head like a whip.  

He held up the tablet and cried, “She made me lose! She messed up the level!”

“Tilda,” Bard said in his warning-voice.  

She looked stricken. Instantly, Bard softened, waving her over to him, the incident already forgotten by Bain as he started his game over again.  Though she was sticky and sweaty and the air temperature had barely begun to drop with the sun, he pulled her into his lap and folded his arms across her stomach, assuming his silent bean-vigil once more.

After an appropriate amount of time had passed, Bard poked Tilda in the side and winked, holding a finger to his lips.  Then, with a lapful of badly-concealed giggling, he reached out the considerable length of his body to where Bain sat absorbed in the game at the entrance to the tent.  Quick as a flash he swiped his whole hand across the screen of Bain’s tablet, eliciting an indignant cry from his son and squeals of laughter from his daughter.

Though Bain protested initially, he was laughing before long, miles of road falling away from his face as easily as red dust brushed off the cuffs of his jeans.  

And then they had dinner.  Bard shoved Tilda off his lap before he overheated completely, and they scraped the very bottom of the pan of soup, eating it all in their hunger.  Crickets filled the air as they filled their stomachs.  The temperature dropped precipitously, bringing long-awaited relief to the heat of the day, and they slept on top of their sleeping bags with all the flaps of the tent unzipped.

The first one to notice the stars was Sigrid.  

“Oh, God, dad, _wow_ ,” she breathed, squirming around somewhere to Bard’s left so that she could get a better viewing angle out of one of the tent’s upper ventilation flaps.

“What? What do you see?” Tilda exclaimed, clambering over Bard to get at Sigrid, pushing an elbow into his stomach somewhere along the way and eliciting a soft “oof.”  

“The stars.  Wow.  It’s cus there’s no more light pollution,” she explained to Tilda.

“Yep,” Bard affirmed quietly.  

He raked the sky for his favorite constellations, and nearly smiled when he discovered that they were all visible.  On his other side, Bain stubbornly persisted at Temple Run, the volume a mere muted tinkling from the far end of the tent.

Bard reached out and put a hand on Sigrid’s arm.  “If you ask your brother very nicely to turn off his tablet,” he said, “you’ll be able to see them even better.”  He knew full well that Bain was within earshot, but it was important that Sigrid say the words for herself.  

She made a face.  Her expression cycled all the way through disgust, reluctance, and curiosity, finally landing on resignation, as he had known it would. “Bain, could you turn it off?” she asked in a rush.

Silence, from the end of the tent, for a while.  Bard and Sigrid watched until his Indiana Jones-esque adventurer was finally caught by the creepy monkeys, and when he switched off the screen, Bard released a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding.  He settled his head more firmly against his sleeping bag.  Rocks poked through the well-worn insulation from underneath, but with a bit of skilled rearranging, he managed to lie so that the worst of them didn’t dig so hard into the back of his skull.  

With his hands folded over his stomach Bard drifted off quickly. The fatigue in his muscles trickled off of him into the ground like water off a windshield, and he was unable to fight the inexorable drip, even to keep watch over his children.  Fortunately, they dropped off soon after, and nothing disturbed them in the night.

* * *

Bard woke when he felt the slow-growing light of dawn beginning to press against the outside of his eyelids.  When he checked his watch, the hour read 6:21.  He wound the thing quickly and then surveyed the tent, checking to make sure all three children were still there.  Not that it would have been possible for them to have bypassed himself, sleeping at the entrance to the tent, unobserved-- but, well.  He was a father.  It was his prerogative to worry about things like  the coyotes and mountain lions that were all too prevalent in the terrain they were travelling through.

Satisfied with the sight of the tops of their heads, he shucked off Tilda’s wayward arm and exited as quietly as he could.  Sigrid stirred and followed him with her eyes, but laid back down again when he put a finger to his lips and gave a meaningful glance at her sleeping siblings.  He turned around and stretched in the watery light of the dawn.  The sun had not yet properly risen, and everything looked softer in the shadowy light.  The far-off crests of plateaus were vague and indiscernible against the dusty blue of the sky.  A few wisps of clouds hovered low on the horizon, darkly underlit, but not large enough to threaten anything resembling rain or even shade come later in the day.

Unfortunately.  Desert mornings were always deceptively cool.  Bard estimated the temperature in the low 80s, but by the time 2 o’clock rolled around he knew they would all be sweating through their filthy clothes in mid-90 degree temperatures.  

And, really, this was not something he was looking forward to.  

He turned back to the tent and roused his children.  “Sigrid,” he said quietly, “wake Tilda.  Give her an energy bar and eat one yourself.”  

She rolled on top of her sleeping bag, the fabric softly rustling in the quiet.  “What time is it?”

“Time to be going,” he told her, but not without a bit of a smile.  They were both thinking back to the way they used to spend lazy Saturday mornings sleeping in far past noon.  

He ducked inside the tent and shook Bain by the shoulder himself.  “C’mon, son. Up. Let’s get walking while the weather’s still cool.”   

Bain woke easily and sat up almost immediately.  A bit too easily.  Bard’s brow furrowed.  He pushed back some hair that had fallen out of its ponytail in the night and squinted through the low light of the tent at his son.  Discoloration ringed his eyes-- a shade not quite heavy enough to be called a dark circle, but noticeable, nonetheless.   

“How’d you sleep?” he asked softly.

Bain glanced with too-bright eyes at his sisters over Bard’s shoulder, and answered with a curt “fine.”

A hard set took up residency at the line of Bard’s mouth and between his brows.  His son looked back at him with a look that was determined and stubborn, and almost-- _almost_ \-- resentful.  He knew he was lying, but he let the matter drop.

“Get some food from your sister and pack up your stuff.  We’re leaving soon.”

“Yes, dad.”

Awkward on his knees, Bard backed out of the tent again, intent on packing up the remnants of the previous night’s meal.  He wet the corner of a rag with some of their water, grimacing as a few drops splashed into the earth, and wiped down the utensils, packing them away. The cookstove followed them into the pack, and he began pulling up tent stakes, listening to the indeterminate sounds of Tilda asking Bain something and his quiet reply.

“Hey,” he said, poking his head in the tent, “pack up your sleeping bags. We’ve gotta go.”

Grumbles of assent rang out.  Bard straightened some of the tangles in his hair and waited patiently for them to exit with all their accoutrements.  The tent went next, rolled somewhat-neatly and stowed on Bard’s back with Bain’s help as he hefted the heavy pack higher on his shoulders.  

He took in the sight of his three tired children, wearing expressions akin to overburdened horses, the comparison made all the more apt by their own smaller backpacks.  He lifted Tilda’s chin with his finger and gave her a smile, holding out his hand for her to take.  Sandy little fingers wiggled between his.

“Off we go,” he said, trying for chipper, but falling somewhat short.  He and Tilda took the lead, Sigrid falling in behind and Bain bringing up the rear.

They made their way back toward the highway and kept up a low level of chatter for the first half hour or so.  It was small things only: things that would not remind them too much of what was now gone.  Bain hypothesized about the shoes he was hoping to find in St. George.  His own had been slowly falling apart for months. Sigrid volunteered a comment about the beauty of the rising sun, and Bard loved her fiercely, in that moment.  If her mother had survived, she would have wrapped her in her arms with a laugh, and perhaps taken her hand and skipped ahead of Bard and Tilda for a moment, years and years falling off of both of them until they were mere children once more.  

Unbounded joy had always bubbled just beneath his wife’s surface.  Bard missed it now more than ever as the heat began to seep out of the rocks, like a physical thing, and--

“Dad, what’s that?”

Bard whipped his head around.  The small smile that had found its way onto his features as he lost himself in reminiscence fell off his face faster than a tumbling boulder.  He followed Bain’s finger into the low expanses of underbrush stretching on either side of the road, and he narrowed his eyes, wishing for the wraparound fly fishing glasses buried in his pack.

Movement stirred some of the dead bushes.  Whatever was causing it was large and slow; rustling a bush here and then another one there several seconds later.  He scooped Bard to him with an outstretched arm, Sigrid drawing automatically closer as he tensed, four pairs of eyes trained on the movement.  

“Sigrid, get my bow,” he said lowly, bending slightly so that she had better access to his pack.  The zippers rattled as she fumbled with them.  

“Here,” she said, thrusting it at him.  Several arrows followed after a moment, devoid of their quiver.  

Bard quickly checked over the compound hunting bow and uncapped the steel broadheads, holding several of their shafts loosely between the fingers of his off hand.  He tightened the arm around Bain and looked each of his children in the eye in turn, seeing uncertainty and some small amount of fear in each of them, but no panic.  Pride surged in his breast.

“I’m going to go over there and see what’s going on. Stay here.  If anything happens, _don’t_ follow me.  Stick to the road.  We’ve discussed this, yeah?”

“Yes, dad,” Sigrid said.  

“Do you have to go?” Tilda asked quietly.  

Bard switched his hand from Bain’s shoulder to Tilda’s.  “It’s best. If it’s a mountain lion, we can’t have it following us.”      

Bain shook his head.  “You told us mountain lions are nocturnal.”

A rustling sounded behind Bard’s back, closer; though no louder.

Bard straightened and hefted his bow into a ready grip.  “Not always, Bain.  Stay back now.”  He stepped off the road carefully, mindful of his heavy pack, pulling an arrow into a half-draw.  He had not lied when he had told Bain that mountain lions were nocturnal.  (And if it had served to relieve a bit of the tension in his son’s shoulders when they had left their home in Springdale a day and a half ago-- well, who could blame a father for finding comfort in that?)

Mountain lions were nocturnal when prey was verdant.  They slipped silently through the rocky terrain of the area around Zion like flowing water, devouring deer and other medium-sized prey.  The odd attack on a human caught encroaching upon its territory was exceedingly uncommon.

But “verdant” was no longer a term that Bard would use to describe the flora and fauna, and he hadn’t seen so much as single a deer dropping in the last three months.  Not for lack of trying.  Venison was nourishing meat.  The few options these facts left were not anything he wanted to chance his children encountering.  

A glance over his shoulder reassured him that they were still safe where he had left them, Sigrid standing protectively close to Bain with an arm around Tilda for good measure.  He focused back on the undergrowth, eyes roving, not settling here nor there but instead allowing flickers of movement to draw his gaze like a bobbing lure drew in a fish.

A cluster of tumbleweed shuddered several feet to his left.  Bard pivoted swiftly, raising the bow and arrow to nearly full draw, extra arrows dangling between the fingers of his draw hand.  Smooth sand-colored muscle loped out from the cover of the dry plants with the suddenness of sliding silt.  The mountain lion was large and female, moving slowly, noticeably gorged.  Her head sniffed the air, flashing a crimson-smeared snout to the hot sky.  Downwind in the stillness, Bard kept the broadhead trained at the back of her left shoulder.  His arrow tracked her progress silently.

She slunk between the low-lying sage and scattered rocks, darting in and out of Bard’s sight.  Each time, he unfocused his eyes and let her subtle movements draw his gaze back again like a rubber band.  Her path meandered toward the road at first before looping back into some of the low red hills they had camped against the night before, most likely headed back toward a den.  

It was obvious she had just finished a meal.  When it became clear that she was not interested (or indeed aware) of either Bard or his children, he released his bow’s tension and waved a single hand over his head at his children in a gesture saying _it’s safe, but stay back_.

The copse of tumbleweed that the lion had emerged from did not stir.  Whatever prey she had been feasting upon was long dead-- probably not her original kill, but likely something she had come upon and scavenged.  Small, mosquito-like insects buzzed over the area.  Bard lowered his bow completely and slowly stepped forward to peer over the tops of the brush.

Innards, dull red from the heat, spilled over the ground, sand intermingling with blood.  A dessicated rib cage lay not far from them, half of the human chest it had once belonged to still clinging mostly-whole on the unmolested far side.  The smell wafted up to Bard all at once, and he quickly shifted his arrows into the same hand as his bow, clutching the sleeve of his t-shirt to his nose.  

He surveyed the area as quickly as he could, unable to bring himself any closer to the corpse.  Or, as it turned out, _corpses_.  Most of a smaller body lay slightly behind the first, missing its arms and stomach.  Bard spotted a polka-dotted tatter dangling limply from a nearby weed and realized that it had been a woman and a man, presumably travelling together, though the question of where or why remained unanswered.

Burial was unfeasible.  He had no shovel; and aside from that fact, he had miles and miles of road ahead of him and no time in which to walk them, let alone bury the sad remains of two long-dead strangers.  

So he turned around and picked his way back through the dirt to Bain and Tilda and Sigrid.

“Here,” he said to Sigrid as he drew level, holding out his arrows.  “Help me?”  He bent and indicated his pack.  Sigrid dutifully recapped the broadheads and stowed them in his quiver.  

“What was it, dad?” Bain asked.  His voice was a touch too eager.  Excited, almost.  A far cry from his previous uncertainty.  Even Tilda was looking at him with wide, expectant eyes; her young mind bleeding out its fear like water through a sieve.  

Sigrid was the only one from whom he could  not hide the tightness in his eyes.  She mirrored his lingering unease with a similar tightness at the corner of her mouth.  A slow, steadying intake of breath.  Bard at first addressed Tilda’s answer to Sigrid before reluctantly flicking his eyes down to his youngest.     

“A mountain lion.  Just like I said.  She was eating, but she moved on.  As should we.”  

He squinted up into the red sun, and then at his watch, wondering how long they had been idling.

No matter the answer, it was too long for Bard’s comfort.

* * *

They entered Hurricane-- (Welcome to Hurricane! Population: 14,372)-- late in the day.  Bard had pushed them all hard.  He had no desire to spend another night in the open.  

The corpses had disturbed him.  After all, was he not human?  Was he not mortal?  Was he not as susceptible to death, and the fear of it, as the next man?  Perhaps more so, for it was not only his own life he feared for.  He had no idea how much universal karma he and his family were borrowing to have survived this long, but he was sure that its balance formed a nigh-unpayable debt.  

Gentle breezes, often coming from nowhere in the relative stillness of the desert, raised more hairs than just those that escaped his sloppy ponytail.  His eyes roved restless over the uniform landscape.  Ridges of red rock they passed under bore his heavy, relentless scrutiny.  He pushed Bain in front of him with a hand at the base of his neck and took up the rear.  Surreptitious glances at the grey highway behind them went unnoticed by his children.

Tilda took up a baleful refrain when they entered the relatively poor town of Hurricane: “Can we stop yet?”  

And Bard answered patiently, every time, with: “Just a little farther.”  

Sigrid’s stepped flagged more and more as they punched deeper into the dregs of civilization until she no longer had the lead but walked instead by his side.  Bard conceded her uncertainty without comment, and they formed a line, walking four abreast along deserted streets.  The feeling of walking where cars ought to have threatened their progress manifested as an eerie sensation of exposure at their spines.

Eventually, even Sigrid began to complain.  They were just passing the bulk of Hurricane High School as they walked down the city’s main street, and her flashlight beam swung wildly when she turned to him.  “Dad, can’t we stop for the night?  We’re all exhausted.  My legs feel like jelly.”  

Tilda and Bain nodded, the three of them (for once) in accordance.  Bard looked warily at the three-level cement-and-metal modern monstrosity of a school to their left, considering.  Weighing.  Assessing the amount of food they had (not enough) and the gathering darkness and the miles they still had to walk (many) and their sore feet and aching backs (wearied to the bone), and, finally, the desperate plea written alongside sweat-smeared dirt on each child’s face.

“It would seem,” he said at last, “that I am outnumbered.”  

Their weak smiles undid the rest of his reservations.

“Come on.  In the school.  Wait in the foyer while I check it out.”  

Bard picked his way through  broken glass and upended desks and scattered mountains of moldering paper, searching for animal tracks and evidence of human habitation.  Including, but not limited to, bodies.  

There were two.  The stench gave them away long before Bard came upon them in the third floor women’s bathroom.  The dessicated girls lay half-slumped against the far tile wall.  They had been, perhaps, holding hands.  

Bard did not step far enough into the bathroom to see for certain.

He returned to his children and corralled them all into the principal’s office on the _first_ floor, where they slept.  Tilda curled up underneath the desk.  Bain shoved aside some papers and slept on top of it, the light of his tablet washing out his face for a mere fifteen minutes before he succumbed to sleep.  Sigrid claimed the small loveseat, fairly passing out as soon as her body hit the plain cushions.  She’d have a crick in her neck in the morning.

Or not.  The resiliency of the young never ceased to amaze Bard.

For his part, he dragged a simple wooden chair over to the door and placed it just behind the threshold.  He dug out his bow and lay it across his lap.  His quiver rested against the leg of the chair.  Brick walls and carpeting did not have the same feeling of safety that open air and rock had-- not anymore.  He kept a silent vigil for several hours, nodding off once or twice.  Around 3 o’clock, by the read of his watch, he got up, stretched violently, and went to find the teacher’s lounge, closing the door of the office behind him.

Vague hopes of finding edible coffee tantalized his sleep-deprived brain.  The lounge smelled half of spoiled food, half of stale air.  A dingy coffee maker stood on a folding table to one side, an array of mugs and filters beside it.  

“C’mon,” Bard mumbled, sticking the flashlight between his teeth and using both hands to sort through the detritus in search of beans.  

He eventually turned up a half-used bag of decaf grounds.  His first thought was _what kind of teacher drinks decaf_? and his second thought was _I’ll take what I can get_.  Unfortunately, what he _got_ was moldy coffee.  He wrinkled his nose and plunged into the pile once more, bringing up a single-serve packet of instant.  It would do.

He flicked the switch on the coffee maker.  

Nothing happened.  

He did it again.  The light stalwartly refused to turn red.  It took him a bit longer than it may have done were he fully rested and awake to realize that the building-- like the rest of the city, like the rest of America-- no longer had electricity.        

With a muttered curse, he returned to his children.

* * *

Day announced itself in the form of Sigrid shaking his shoulder.  The bow and arrows  tumbled from his sleep-numb fingers onto the carpet with a series of clatters, and the noise served to jolt him to full awareness.

“We’re ready to go,” Sigrid said, a little guiltily.  “I thought I’d let you sleep for a bit.”  

Bard rubbed his eyes viciously with one hand.  He blinked the sleep out of them like a man blinking into the sun and rose, collecting his fallen weaponry.  

They trooped out of the school in a single file and fanned back out when they reached the road.  Bard’s neck was not thanking him for his upright snooze, and he shoved his sunglasses on as soon as they hit the daylight, hiding eyes that were doubtlessly ringed with dark circles and warding off the stabbing light that threatened to induce a headache.

Their breakfast was powerbars, all around.  Thank god for Costco bulk boxes, for Bard did not want to waste time making the fire that would be required for anything more substantial.  They were already a day behind.

Though the empty, broken streets were no longer home to any recognizable forms of civilization, the husk of it remained: the aborted potential of one, of a traveller-- like Bard, perhaps-- that could greet them around every next turn, or at the top of every hill that they crested with their thighs burning.  

Bard walked with his bow held loosely in one hand.  His hip quiver was properly fastened around his waist, and the arrows made slight clacking noises with each step he took.  Tilda looked at it askance, and nearly asked: “Why?”  He could see the question hovering in her eyes whenever he looked down at her.      

But how could he possibly explain a fear that was no more concrete a feeling than that of eyes on the back of his head?  How could he reassure his frightened daughter when he himself had no foundation upon which to place such support, except empty promises and false bravado?  

Always, _always_ \-- Bard tried.

He made innocuous observations of the town around them.  He pointed out unusual clouds.  (Bain rolled his eyes at these.)  He started a teeth-pullingly-slow round of the Alphabet Game, a dumb competition to see who could first spot all the letters of the alphabet in the rusting street signs around them.  

Bain got to H before giving up.  Tilda persevered through to Z, and she looked a bit braver after that.  Or at least more willing to hide her emotions.

They walked.

On and on and on.

They rested around noon-- and they were so close that Bard could feel St. George as a physical pull at his sternum, with the string representing the need to _keep walking_. But they lit the cookstove and cooked a saucepan full of oatmeal and passed it around, and Bard scrubbed the pan out as best he could with sand and a rag when he was done, and he had to admit that the solid food made every footfall just a little bit easier.  

They found a pump in a small rural town-- more a collection of small ranches than a real town-- called Leeds, and refilled their canteens.  Bard took a moment to splash some water over his face and rub his hands over his cheeks.  Sand slid roughly under his hands, harsh over his skin, but he persisted until the texture faded to the coolness of mere water.  He pulled Bain over and motioned for him to do the same-- Sigrid and Tilda did not have to be told, and Sigrid had taken the added step of wetting a handkerchief, tying it around her neck to help keep her cool.

Leeds was practically St. George in all but municipal lines.  There came a point around half-past one in the sweltering afternoon that they crested a punishing undulation in a highway that insisted on flowing with the red hills instead of cutting through them when they finally beheld St. George, spread out all at once in a wide valley before them, billboards rising like those little yellow flags that demarked underground pipelines as far west as Bard could see.

He stopped and cupped an unnecessary hand over his sunglasses, peering determinedly in that direction, and gathered Tilda closer by the top of her head, rubbing his hand over her sweaty scalp.

“See that?” he gasped, his voice dehydration-roughened.  He cleared his throat a couple of times and took a swig of water.

With amusement overcoming fatigue, Sigrid replied for the lot of them: “Yes, dad.  We’re not blind.”  

“Alright. Listen to me.  You know the plan.  Start looking for food. We’re not gonna be picky.”

They trudged down the hill with new energy.  

The going became rougher as they plunged deeper into the city.  Cars littered the highway and began to impede their progress, so they hopped the divider and walked in the dirt at its edge.  Bain found a stick and dragged it along the metal rail until Sigrid looked ready to murder him, and Bard called softly for him to stop.  

His shoulders hardened, briefly, before he unclenched his fist and let the stick drop.

But they walked faster than they had walked all day, and when they reached one of St. George’s commercial districts, their pace increased even more.  

Looters had been far less careful in their desecration of St. George than they had been of Hurricane or Springdale.  Glass was constantly crunching underfoot.  Bard was intensely grateful for the thick-soled hiking boots all four of them wore.  Trash was equally ubiquitous-- food and bottles and occasionally larger things, mattresses and tables and cash registers whose bills had long fluttered away but whose change still glinted dully on the ground around it.  Less cars crowded the roads farther into town.

The apocalypse had been a slow one.  Everyone who had wanted to had had time to get out.  And those who had stayed behind--

Well, they were dead.  

The bodies were proof enough of that.

When Bain found one, he screamed, short and loud, and Bard’s head shot up like he’d been yanked by the hair.  His son barreled out of the convenience store he had been searching, and Bard dropped the wooden stake he’d been using to push the worst of the garbage away from himself as he waded through the rubble-strewn streets.

“Bain!”

His son ran towards him, stopping several feet short of him, eyes blown wide and breathing hard, one hand pointing back the way he had come. “Dad-- there’s-- oh my god--”

Bard knew, instantly, what he meant.  Sigrid caught on one beat later.  Her head swivelled, inexorably, towards the convenience store.  The term “morbid curiosity” could not have better described her gaze.  

“Come here, Bain,” Bard commanded.  Bain shuffled to his side.  “Look at me.”

Bain did not.  

“Look at me,” Bard repeated sternly.  

Bain did.

“It’s alright.”

This was not what Bain needed to hear.  

Then again, this was not a talk Bard had ever planned to have.  Had the world been just, Bain would never have had to see such a thing beyond the pixelated unreality of a video game, and Bard would never have had to grapple for words with which to smooth away the horror of the sight of a dead body.  

For god’s sake, he hadn’t even discussed sex with him yet.

“What did you see?” Bard intoned.  

Disgust crinkled Bain’s face.  He turned to the side and emptied what little there was in his stomach onto the road.  Sigrid pulled Tilda to her chest and ran a hand through her hair while Bard rubbed hard between Bain’s shoulderblades.  “Let it out,” he encouraged.  He did not want his son to see this as a weakness.  This was no such thing, this was an emotional response, this was-- something he himself had not been able to conjure, when he had seen the first of the dead, months ago.

He’d gone down into the Kellar’s basement in search of a machete.  They had been elderly-- their nearest neighbors in Springdale, living at the end of their cul de sac in a house dating back to the Great Depression.  Mr. Kellar had brought his wife and his shotgun down into the basement.  He’d shot her first-- blood and brains spread like a firework across the cement wall behind her-- and then himself.  

And Bard had walked around the bodies.  And averted his eyes.  And rummaged through rusting garden implements, and come up empty, and ascended the stairs once more.

At the top, he’d leaned up against the cellar door and taken deep, calming breaths to steady himself that he found he did not need, and then he’d returned home to his children, nothing more permanent than a vague sense of unease sticking in his mind to remember the experience by.

Maybe that made him cold.

Maybe that meant he was empty-- too gutted by hunger, too broken by the wife he’d buried two years before the first wave of sickness.  

But he refused to believe that the emptiness had made him stronger.

_Bain_ was the one who was strong: Bain was the one who was straightening up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, reaching for his canteen and swishing around a mouthful of water before spitting it back out with decent aim onto an empty beer can.  Bain was the one who would assimilate the wrongness that he had just seen, and use it to harden himself, and become stronger and smarter and more wary of the world.

But that was the reward of being a successful parent, Bard reckoned, as he told his children to walk together from now on.  The point was to raise them to be better than yourself.  His weakness was not his children’s to bear.

And he could take comfort from that.

He led them off the main street afterwards, keeping his eyes peeled for stores that might have food or supplies but were less immediately apparent targets to looters than stores like Walmart or Costco. But the pickings were slim.  They found some cream of wheat in a drugstore and stowed it in a grocery cart that Sigrid snagged from a parking lot.  Its front wheel, inevitably, squeaked; and the whole thing made an unholy racket as Bard pushed it through the detritus of the street, rattling in protest.

They scored a case of water bottles from the kitchen of a Red Robin and a box of stale breadsticks from an Olive Garden farther downtown.  Bard grabbed as many arrows and broadheads as he could feasibly carry from the local Sportsman’s Warehouse-- the guns and bullets had been cleared out like a buffet after a bus full of tourists, but no one had wanted the arrows.  Unsurprisingly.  The bow was not a middle-aged businessman’s first choice as a survival weapon.  

Eventually they rejoined the highway, trundling along towards the west end of town and (hopefully) more fertile hunting grounds.

They did not make it far.

A low rumbling noise grew with each new hundred feet they covered.  Tilda’s young ears picked it up first, and before long they were all exchanging wary glances.  

Bard held out a hand and stopped.  He forced the wheels of the carriage onto an angle so that it wouldn’t roll down the dirt at the side of the highway. Then he hopped the metal barrier, three smaller pairs of shoes landing beside his a moment later.  He readjusted his grip on his bow.

They wove in between cars, one every fifty feet or so, most with damage from collisions or popped tires or open, gutted engines.   The rumbling noise continued.  As they grew nearer, it gradually coalesced into the sound of a running engine.

Bard drew an arrow and nocked it. “Get behind me,” he hissed, and his children exchanged panicked looks at the urgency in his voice before complying. He did not wish to scare them, but he knew that the quickest way to ensure their compliance-- and therefore safety-- was to make them aware of the seriousness of the situation.

There was a running car up ahead of them, which, judging by the steady cadence of its reverberations, was idling. This meant a person. Possibly people. Alive. Possibly helpful, possibly… not.  Which was why Bard readjusted his grip and proceeded as carefully as he could down the highway.

The road was wider on foot than it ever looked when traversed in a car: twenty, thirty feet across, easy; seemingly dwarfing the idling pickup truck parked just beyond a ring of stalled-out cars approximately sixty feet ahead of them.  

Bard crouched behind the last car on the road and motioned for Bain and Sigrid and Tilda to follow suit. Three sets of wide eyes stared back at him.  Tilda hugged her knees.  “Stay here,” Bard whispered to them.  “I’m just going to check it out.  Don’t follow me until I say it’s safe, alright?”

Three sets of nods. Sigrid visibly swallowed down a lump in her throat.

Bard let the tension out of his bowstring long enough so that he could reach out, one-handed, and awkwardly stroke her jaw with his thumb. “I won’t be long.”

With a swift motion he stood, string taut once more, moving away from the car his children were sheltered behind and into an open stretch of uncluttered highway, advancing at a half-crouch toward the idling pickup truck.   The barest sliver of a man’s bent back was now visible on the far side of the pickup, leaning down, busy with something in the cab.

Bard pulled his bow to its full 90-pound draw, took a deep breath, and called out--

Nothing. At first. The words stuck in his throat. Finally, he managed,

“You there!”

The man froze.  Bard’s heart kicked up several beats. He stepped closer, and called, again: “Who are you?”

The man disappeared entirely from view around the back of the pickup. Bard tensed, rotating his steps, moving to put the man into view again, but before he could establish a line of sight the man reappeared, suddenly holding an 18-inch .223 caliber rifle in his arms.  

“I might ask you the same question,” the man purred, snapping a mag into the rifle as he rounded the back of the pickup bed. They circled each other warily; a couple of mangy dogs treading on the other’s territory.  They looked the parts: Bard’s hair was violently askew,  red dirt encrusting his clothes and boots like barnacles, forearms sunburnt and bare.  The man in front of him did not look much better.  

He had close-shorn, unwashed blonde hair that stuck up with such a degree of haphazardness that Bard had no trouble conjuring an image of him with gritted teeth-- much like the expression he wore now-- squinting into a cracked gas station mirror, snipping away mercilessly. He wore a grey button-down shirt that was mottled with grease stains and mostly-intact dark jeans that had just the barest dusting of red at the hem.

But the most noticeable aspect of the man’s appearance for Bard at that moment was the rifle. The damn thing was even scoped for hunting.  The man held it lazily, slung over his chest by a tactical strap, trained unerringly at Bard from waist-level.

“Unless you care to engage in an academic assessment of ancient weaponry versus modern day armaments, I suggest you put down your bow down and tell me who you are and what you are doing.”

Bard made no move to acquiesce. “My bow may not be semi-automatic,” he warned, “but I assure you it will kill you just the same as a bullet would. Probably with a fair bit more mess.”  He hesitated. “How about we both put our weapons down.  Then we can talk.”

“How civilized.  Yet we are talking nevertheless, and I rather like my weapon where it is.”  

“Fine,” Bard bit out, brow furrowing, “will you tell me your name, then?”

“I believe we have been over this, Mr. Bowman. You talk first.” He gestured languidly with the nose of the rifle.  The movement was awkward, as if impeded by something. Bard squinted through his glasses and made out a .357 magnum pistol in a hip holster at the man’s side in addition to his rifle.  

_Paranoid_? Bard wondered. _Or just prepared_?

“My name is Bard,” he called to him.

The man was silent.  

Bard waited a couple moments, but a couple moments only. “Alright.  I’ve just told you my name. Will you not return the favor?”

After a beat, the man returned with, “Thranduil,” in a slow drawl that sounded egregiously out of place among the crumbling asphalt and the heat-choked air.

“I’m not in the habit of shooting people I’m on first-name terms with, Thranduil. Can we put our weapons down now? This bow has a 90-pound draw weight.”

Though it was difficult to tell at their adversarial distance, Bard swore the saw he man raise an eyebrow.

With a swift movement, Thranduil’s hands moved on the gun.  Bard’s sinews hardened like steel cables in response, every inch of him tensing in preparation for the release of his arrow.

But there was only the small _click_ of a safety engaging, and Thranduil was grasping the rifle at both ends, twisting it on its strap around his body so that it rested at his back instead of at his waist. In turn, Bard let out the tension in his bowstring slowly, savoring the rush of relief to shoulder and chest muscles that had been aching under the strain. He stuck the arrow back in his quiver and slung the bow over one shoulder.

“Better?” Bard asked.

“...better,” Thranduil agreed.

A beat of silence elapsed.

“Your truck.” Bard waved vaguely in its direction.

"What of it?"

“It’s running.”

“That much is obvious.”

Bard’s lips thinned. His heat-weakened patience did not appreciate the man’s purposeful obtuseness. “You have gas,” he clarified.

“A more useless commodity than you’re assuming, given that my truck will at present do no more than idle.”

“You broke down?”

“Essentially.”

“Let me take a look.”  Bard took several steps forward before Thranduil snapped his gun up, faster than Bard could have ever anticipated, and snarled,

“ _Get away from my truck._ ”  

Immediately, Bard backtracked, hands raised to shoulder level. “I’m a mechanic,” he said slowly.  “Was. Was a mechanic. I ran an auto shop. I can help you.”

“Why would you want to help me?” Thranduil asked, his rifle and voice both unwavering.

Bard hesitated.  The man expected a motive ulterior to pure altruism.  In Springdale, Bard had been accustomed to helping others when others required help: such assistance went unquestioned, voicelessly accepted and voicelessly thanked. The unspoken assumption was only that the recipient be willing to help in their turn.  Small towns, often, were like that.

But the more he looked at Thranduil the more he realized that he was staring into the eyes of an un-kindred soul. He had, perhaps, lived in a large town-- a major city, even. Somewhere cold and distant and unaccustomed to the intimacy of close living quarters.  Furthermore, he had a vehicle.  He had likely not originated from anywhere within the state, and to Utahns, anything farther than Pocatello was basically foreign soil.

Bard did not personally think so. But. Images of the rib cages of the two travellers’ corpses he had found two days ago entered his mind, played there like a slowed-down film reel, and then slowly blinked out of his consciousness.

He lowered his hands.  He kept his voice level. “Though I do not know what it is you have seen on these roads to put such mistrust for your fellow man into your heart,” he said slowly, “I assure you that my help comes with no strings attached.”

Now, the nose of Thranduil’s rifle did indeed waver. It dipped up, down-- once, twice-- and then he re-engaged the safety once more.

“Your word?”

“My word.” Bard held out one hand, as if to shake, although they were too far away.  When Thranduil made no move, he boldly crossed the distance between them and repeated the gesture.  Thranduil’s hand slowly rose from his side to grasp his.  New calluses scraped against Bard’s old ones.  They released their grip quickly, and Bard turned to the propped-open hood of the dusty truck, a kind of truce having been offered and accepted.

At his back, Thranduil hovered. Bard bent over the engine and poked and prodded, eyes flicking to the side, straining to keep sight of the man at his periphery.  He mentally thanked his children for having the good sense to remain hidden as he bent over the still-hot engine.

It did not take him long to discern the problem. “Timing belt’s stripped,” he announced, straightening up.  “You need a new one.”

“Is it easily replaceable?”

“Fairly.”

“Can you show me how?”

“I could do it myself, if I had a new belt and some tools.”

They held each other’s gazes evenly for a few moments.  Bard watched Thranduil weigh his trust of him against whatever memories-- or ingrained prejudices-- were preventing him from taking him at his word, and deliberately softened his eyes, relaxed his posture, gave every appearance of _I mean you no harm_.

“I have tools in the back.  Where might I procure a belt?”

Bard shrugged. “One of these wrecks probably has one you could use.  You just need to match engine type and size.”

Thranduil made no move to either stand aside from Bard or commence a search for said timing belt.  In fact, his stillness verged on… eerie.  A thick breeze tossed up down the yellow dashed lines of the highway, swirling sand and brittle leaves around their boots.  Even cacti spikes stirred in the wind.  Thranduil, however, remained unruffled.

A bead of sweat slid down Bard’s temple and halted in the dirt on his cheek, somehow sand-encrusted again after having been washed a mere hour or two previously.  He reached up a hand and smeared it away.  

After a long, long deliberation, Bard sighed.  He drew in a deep breath. “Sigrid?” he called out.  He swiveled his head toward the car he had left his children behind a full ten minutes ago.  “Sigrid, it’s alright.  You guys can come out now.”

Golden hair slowly rose into view from sixty feet away, shortly followed by the very top of a dark-haired head. Bard shifted his gaze sideways to Thranduil’s face.  It betrayed no change in emotion, even as his eyes flicked over to meet Bard’s. “Stony” was the adjective that sprung to Bard’s mind-- not the crumbly sandstone of the desert but the unyielding marble of the northeast coast: Maine and New Hampshire, Massachusetts.  He wondered if that was where he was from.  Distracted, Bard refocused his attention to his children.

They approached warily, flicking looks between their father and the stranger standing at his side.  “It’s alright,” he repeated. “Tilda, come here.” Bard opened his arms and waited for her to come to him, which she did, followed apace by a more timid Bain and an outrightly suspicious Sigrid.  

“My children,” he said to Thranduil. “Tilda, Bain, and--” he indicated his daughter standing at his shoulder with his chin-- “Sigrid, my oldest.”

Bain was staring openly at Thranduil’s magnum.

Thranduil assessed each of them like checkers set before him on a game board. “Your wife?” he asked bluntly.

“Dea--” Bard began, switching mid-word when he felt Tilda twitch beneath his arm. “Gone,” he finished.   _Dead_ and _gone_ , he amended bitterly.  Some of that bitterness must have leaked onto his face and into his false smile, because for the first time since meeting the man, Thranduil was the first to drop his gaze.

“My condolences.”  Thranduil bowed his head slightly, a hand twitching at his side.  Bard watched it while he waited for his heart to harden once more.  “Shall we?”

Bard snapped his head back up. “I’m sorry?”

“The timing belt.”

“Yes. Of course. Bain, Sigrid; help us find a timing belt for Thranduil’s truck, would you?”

They dispersed, opening hoods and rummaging in engines in a deficit of words, but far from silence:

Here and there, a hood slammed, indicating that the car they’d been searching was a bust. Tilda was too small to open them on her own, so she stayed with the red pickup, back pressed against one of its front wheels.  Intermittently, the hot wind puffed over them.  The odd shuffle of boots mixed in with the mechanical clanking.

Sigrid found one first. “Dad, over here,” she called, looking up elbows-deep from a thirty-year-old Dodge Ram. Bard hurried over and took her place, swiftly and efficiently freeing the part with a handful of wrenches silently handed over from the back of Thranduil’s truck.

Four pairs of idle hands joined Bard at Thranduil’s truck and watched him replace the part like some mockery of  a stage. Once, Bard turned around and caught Thranduil staring at him.  Bard tore himself away from their magnetism and did not turn around again.

“That should do it,” Bard declared after fifteen awkward minutes, slamming the hood.  He looked to Thranduil expectantly, gaze open and loosened by the mechanical familiarity of the work.  Both hands worked to push flyaways back from his forehead, smoothing them in place with his own sweat.  And motor grease, undoubtedly. 

“My thanks,” Thranduil said, reaching out to clasp Bard’s filthy hand.  

Bard raised an eyebrow. “Certainly.” He went to draw away, but Thranduil’s grip unexpectedly tightened, holding him fast. What small truce they had temporarily scratched into the act of repairing the pickup truck crumbled away like so much rust.

If Bard’s nerves hadn’t so quickly coiled his muscles, the suddenness with which Thranduil let go of his hand would have sent Bard stumbling backwards.  The man gaped at his now-blackened hand as though it were bleeding. With the same care that he would use when confronted with an aggressive animal, Bard began to step away.

“Let’s go,” he whispered into Sigrid’s hair, and they went.  Bain tried to say something, but Bard shook his shoulder, harshly, and he was silent. He longed to draw his bow.

They were nearly one hundred feet away-- their shopping cart full of food in sight-- when the slight metallic clinking of a rifle strap reached their ears.  Every hair on Bard’s neck stood simultaneously on end.  Quick booted footsteps joined the sound moments later, and Bard allowed his dread to draw his eyes shut once-- just once. Then he opened them, and prepared for the worst.

He turned around with rigidity in his shoulders and a matching set to his mouth.  “What else can I do for you, Thranduil?”  A nearly-insignificant stress overlaid the _else_.  Nearly.

“I regret that I cannot pay you for the repair.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Futilely, Bard made to turn away again.

Thranduil’s voice chased him back. “However.” Bard waited. Thranduil took a step forward. Absurd images from the spaghetti westerns of his teenage years chased themselves behind his eyes.   

“Bard,” he began.

One of his eyebrows twitched. There was something pleasant about the warmth of the voice with which this man-- this stranger-- _Thranduil_ \-- spoke his name.  It calmed him.  

“It is not safe to travel alone on these roads. Not especially in recent months.”

“What do you know of the safety of the roads?”

“Much. Much more than you do.”

"What's your point?  Thranduil.” Bard tried the name in his mouth. It had none of the resonance of his on Thranduil's, but it had a kind of power behind it, nonetheless.  But perhaps it was just the sweet satisfaction of speaking to someone his own age after so many months. 

“I am merely passing through this city.  My final destination is Las Vegas.  They say there are survivors massing in one of its suburbs-- Henderson.  You and your family could be safe there.”

Tilda tugged at his sleeve. “Dad! Dad, is it true?”

Hope filled her eyes, and in that moment, Bard hated Thranduil for putting it there where he should have done.

"I don't know, darling. I hope so."  He looked up at Thranduil.  He had to squint-- the sun had begun to set behind his back.  "Are you offering to take us there, as payment? Is that it?"

"Yes."

With as much thought as he had spent pondering whether or not the revelation of the existence of his children would be worth gaining Thranduil’s transitory trust, Bard took a mirroring step towards Thranduil, his body a barrier between this heavily-armed stranger and his children.  “Who is ‘they?’”

“You are not the first person I’ve met on this highway,” Thranduil said, raising an eyebrow in the most blatant expression of emotion he’d yet seen him display.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“No. I didn’t.”  That seemed to be a habit of his.  Thranduil regarded him with an owl-like curiosity.  Or perhaps it was more that of an eagle-- cunning and assessing right before its inevitable descent in tightening gyres upon its prey.  “I’ve come a long way to be here. I am… searching.”  He bit out the words like they cost him physical pain.  Then he repeated them, louder.  “I am searching for someone.  Some of the people I have met have been helpful.” He indicated Bard with a dip of his head. “Others have not been.  Such is the nature of humanity.  It would be foolish to expect any change in its dichotomy, even now, given that ‘humanity’ as we once knew it is long over.”

Ignoring Thranduil’s philosophical tangent, Bard sought the bleeding wound in Thranduil's words and pressed. “Who are you searching for?”

This, it seemed, was not a question that Thranduil had been expecting, for he blinked quickly several times.  “My son,” he answered simply.  “He was a student at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.  I have come here to find him.”

“Your son,” Bard repeated.

“My son.”

The scrape of rubber on asphalt as he dug the toe of his boot into the road was preternaturally loud. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked at last. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were less pronounced than they had been when they had begun the conversation.

“I have driven a long way with no map and very little gas. As well as satisfying my small debt to you, I would appreciate having a guide to ensure the final leg of my trip goes smoothly.”

Bard’s eyebrows furrowed. “Just follow the highway,” he said, “there are no turnings--”

“I have to _find_ my _son_ ,” Thranduil cut over him, suddenly moving, suddenly no space between them, “and separating us are canyons and gorges and an ever-shifting desert. If there is even one rockslide, even one roadblock in my way, I have no knowledge of the backroads in this area, and no way to go on.  I have come too far to allow that to happen.  I will do this with or without you, Bard, but with you, I may have a better chance.”

They had advanced out of earshot of Bain and Sigrid and Tilda, so Bard felt comfortable asking the mercenary question of “Why travel with you? Why not make our own way? We've done just fine for ourselves so far.”

Thranduil's eyes darted over Bard's shoulder.  “I would have thought that obvious. Protection. As I have said, these roads are not safe.”  

Bard said nothing.  Thranduil continued. “...However, I must admit I anticipated that the mere rumor of a gathering of survivors would have been enough to persuade you to travel with me.  Are you not even curious?”

“I didn’t say that I wasn't.” Bard didn’t have to glance back at his children for Thranduil to see the thread of his thoughts. The idea of survivors massing in a suburb of Las Vegas seemed absurd. Like the last-minute deus ex machina before the credits rolled on old television serials.  The only things of note in Henderson were snowbird condominiums and the headquarters of Erebor, a tech conglomerate.

In a low voice, Thranduil purred, “That is where I shall take my son once I find him. Think of your children, and think quickly, for I have already wasted half a day idling on this highway, and I wish to waste no more.”  After a moment, Thranduil whispered something under his breath. 

"What was that?" Bard asked.

Thranduil looked to the side sharply. "Nothing," he dismissed.

But when Bard replayed the snatch of sound he had caught in his mind, it sounded suspiciously like  _I have to find my son_.

Bard nodded once.  Something like a grin manifested itself on Thranduil's face at his agreement, but Bard hesitated to call it that.  The man tilted his chin down and curled the edges of his mouth in a semblance of the expression-- but a no more than a semblance. It brought to Bard's mind stylized images of grinning buffalo skulls strategically placed outside roadside motels.  

Bard ripped his gaze away and hastened back to his children. “Kids,” he said, “grab the food. Get it in the back of the truck. We’re going to ride with Thranduil for a little while.”

“What?” Sigrid interjected immediately. “Dad, I don’t--"

He shushed her, turning swiftly to watch Thranduil's back as he strode towards his truck.  

"I don't trust him," she continued in more muted tones. "Why does he need your help to follow the highway?”

“He doesn’t,” Bard said. “He just wants to make sure he doesn’t get lost.  He’s trying to reunite with his son in Vegas.”

He cut himself off.  He was on the verge of revealing the truth of a danger, which he had (up until now) tried so very hard to avoid.  It was such a heavy thing. He had seen it crush more fragile spirits than the ones his children were imbued with.  “It’s best for us to go,” he said.  “He’s going to help me protect you.” He thumbed Tilda's nose and nearly smiled at the absurdity of the notion.  No matter the apparent sincerity of his words, Thranduil wanted something more from Bard than he could repay with mere protection.  He could feel it in the eager lean of his long legs, and in the barely-caught feverish edge in his manner, and the way he had smiled after Bard had nodded.  

“Protect us from what?” Sigrid demanded.  

She had dug to the root of Bard’s half-lies with the brutal efficiency that his wife had once used to wheedle out the truth from him when the garage had been having financial troubles.  He attempted to brush at her hair, but she shifted ever so slightly away from him.  He tried to stop the hurt from reaching his eyes.

“The world,” he answered simply.  He lingered, a hand suspended in the air, for an over-long moment.  Then it dropped to adjust the hem of his shirt where it rode up against his pack's strap.  “Come on. Help your brother and sister pack up the truck.  We’re leaving right away.”

They did, as ever, as he bade.

While they worked, Bard re-checked his pack, and put his bow and arrows in order.  He joined Thranduil, who was checking his tire pressure with a small silver gauge. “I’ll drive,” he said.  It was not a question.

“It’s my truck.”

Bard shook his head. “I was born and bred in this desert, Thranduil.  It’s basically a straight shot there, but if we do have to detour, I know these roads far better than you do.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Thranduil lowered his eyes and bent his head: acquiescence. “Very well.” He stepped neatly around Bard and headed for the cab.

With an odd smack, Bard cut Thranduil off with a hand planted on the passenger door of the pickup.  The man was several inches taller than him, and at such close quarters Bard found himself having to look up to meet his eyes.  “One more thing.”  Bard lowered his voice and his chin and brought his other hand up to gesture with one finger.  “I’m choosing to trust you.  But if any harm comes to my children at your hands, I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”

Thranduil blinked, languidly; while his head dipped slowly sideways.  “You are a good father.  Your children must love you very much.”

Bard’s mouth dropped open slightly at the non-sequitur. “I’m-- I’m sorry?”

Steel scaffolding bore up Thranduil’s next words, a hard and unyielding promise: “Your children are in no danger from me.  As one father to another, you have my word.”  

Thranduil jerked forward into Bard’s space, and Bard backed up fast, his hand slipping from the door.  But Thranduil merely grabbed the handle and wrenched it open, smoothly adjusting his rifle strap as he slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door behind him.  Cool eyes watched him from behind the tinted window.

Unease mixed in the pit of Bard’s stomach like a batch of bad chili. He stepped around to the bed of the truck where his children were hunkered with their food and Thranduil’s assorted detritus. A tarp. A battered cooler. Several boxes, and a heavy metal safe. Gas cans.  

“Stay sitting,” he warned. “I won’t be driving more than fifty miles an hour, so you should be fine.  The window will be open if you need me.”

Bain was, of all things, grinning, a jarring contrast to the twisting of Bard’s innards. “Dad. We’ve ridden in the backs of trucks plenty of times.” Could something as simple as a ride in an open truck bed still have the power to delight him? Or was he just glad to be off his feet?

“And who allowed you to ride in a truck without my permission? You’re grounded, young man.” He reached over and ruffled Bain’s hair.

Bain cringed away, hiding his grin.. Not too old then, yet, for Bard to make him smile.  He stored the fact away in a golden corner of his mind and joined Thranduil in the cab.  

He pulled the door shut and took a moment to get acquainted with the locations of the wheel and gear levers.  With a twist of his wrist, the engine started.  It idled for a moment, waiting for Bard to release the clutch. Slightly hazy blue sky and orange-brown sage-dotted hills filled the windshield, whose tinting was peeling at the edges.

“You know, I never even liked Vegas,” Bard informed the air.

Thranduil faced straight ahead and said nothing.

Bard shifted into first and drove.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A note about the geography: before college happened, I lived in St. George for seven years. I visited Springdale and Zion National Park several times a season, hiked through the desert more times than I can count, and drove the exact same stretch of highway Bard and Thranduil are (about to) embark on equally often. Any and all descriptions included in this fic and its sequel are therefore 100% bona-fide. 
> 
> Speaking of the sequel, it should be posted within a week. It's already half-written. Stick around.


End file.
